J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Turner’s Uncle John (his father’s brother John Turner, junior), was Master of the Barnstaple Poor House when the artist visited him on the North Devon leg of his 1811 tour; he had also visited his Uncle Price Turner in Exeter (for which see the contemporary Corfe to Dartmouth sketchbook, under Tate D08842; Turner Bequest CXXIV 30), earlier on his clockwise journey. Turner’s father, raised in nearby South Molton but long established in London, had visited Barnstaple earlier in the same year, apparently on family business.1

Turner’s inscription tails off, but Finberg’s ‘Old Barum’ is probably correct. ‘Barum’ is still in local usage as an alternative to Barnstaple, and the inhabitants are Barumites; the Poor House was presumably the workhouse formerly on the site of Barnstaple Library in Tuly Street2 (a union workhouse was subsequently built in 1837 in the town’s Alexandra Road3). Later developments make Turner’s viewpoint difficult to establish. The building(s) at the centre appear(s) to be shown from a different direction in the sketch on the recto (D08663; CXXIII 158).